Platt, however, is confident the four forwards will soon start firing and insists City can recover the lost ground in the title race.

"Seven points is a significant amount, there's no doubt about it," he said. "United are in the driving seat but there is half a season to go.

"I don't think it is insurmountable by any stretch of the imagination. It's not as though we are playing badly. We feel as though we are playing well, we are producing efforts on target.

"We are dominating possession and every statistic in most games, except goals. In the last few games we have produced enough efforts on goal but if you correlate the statistics we should be scoring more goals.

"These things have a habit of balancing out over the season. Goalscorers, at the end of the season, usually have the same quota that they had [in previous years]."